City Council Packet - Cornelius

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we—I don't know. I'm kind of stuck at what I'm supposed to be learning. If there's no business license, and—can there have been a commercial use without a business license? Who do I ask? And I'm wondering, you know, so without a business license—I don't know who I'm supposed to be asking, so maybe my— Male Speaker: [inaudible #1 51:07] let Dick take a shot at first. Commissioner Hansen: Please help me. Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: Well, I mean—yes, there needs to be a business license. I mean, I don't see any way around that. And I, like you— Commissioner Hansen: Well, I'm listen— Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: It’s not about whether we like this or not, it’s— Commissioner Mark Starrett: Right. It's whether or not the property had been abandoned for the period of the time that the City says it wasn’t being used for what it was intended for. Commissioner Hansen: I may agree with everybody and still not reach— Commissioner Bill Bash: So right now, what we're trying to do is ask questions of the individuals that are giving testimony and then save our discussion around what we're—questions about, after we’ve kind of heard, unless there's somebody who directly addresses and says, hey, I've got this commercial business license here. It's dated blah, blah, blah. Then we can— Commissioner Hansen: That's why I was asking— Commissioner Bash: But I think—so that's kind of where we're at, is we're just—if we feel like we need get clarification from an individual, then we can do that. Chad Jacobs, City Attorney's Office: And, if I could just clarify for the Commission and for the public— this is Chad Jacobs from the City Attorney's Office—you have the criteria set forth in front of you that's in the Staff Report, and that's the criteria that you're required to apply, and that's the Community Development Code. And what the Code says is that if they're—if the nonconforming use did not—was not consistently— ceased for more than one year, then they lose the right to have that nonconforming use in the future. So the question before you really is, was there a proper use during that time period in question? Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Okay, so we still have Terry Emmert. Robert Snee: Also, ran out of cards. I'm Robert Snee. I'd like to testify as well. I'm the attorney for Mr. Emmert. Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: Okay, we'll have you go after Terry. State your name and address, please, for the record. Terry Emmert: Terry Emmert, 11811 SE Highway 212, Clackamas. I've been before many bodies before, and I've seen many things, and I'm honestly really taken aback by what I've heard so far tonight. We bought that property about ten years ago. We went into the City because it had a horse boarding. It wasn’t commercial license. They boarded horses. We bought the property. Then got hit with about a half a million dollar sewer assessment for horse boarding, which I think we've paid about $400,000. The amount of R:\Board and Commissions\Planning Commission\CPC June 26 2012 Verbatim Transcript.doc
money that we received off of this because we haven't had any viable—I shouldn't say we haven't had tenants that have wanted an industrial use, but every one we've requested has been turned down. Even our own use in heavy transportation, we've been turned down. I bought it so that we could keep the horse activities going and in the meantime, use it as a spare storage yard for our equipment and heavy transportation as we move buildings, things like the Spruce Goose, the Delta IV rocket from Boeing Aerospace [#1 54:30] and most recently, a big boulder down in California, and now the—the new Star Wars Systems. You know, the moving business has been rather slow right now for the last two or three years in Oregon, but in times past, we've probably move four or five buildings—four or 5,000 buildings in Clackamas County, Washington County, and Multnomah County. And, when we approached the City and said we were buying, we had another piece of property in Cornelius, the Walmart site. And we had the opportunity to sell it to some other people, but their usage wasn't going to be the building and so forth. It was a dealership that wanted to put a car dealership in. And we held off and worked with the City, and then after we did this, I've never seen such a lack of cooperation. We started to park some equipment; we were told we couldn’t park any equipment. I said, “My gosh, it's fenced. It's got paved surfaces. You have a garbage company here.” Cal-Cable [# 1 55:33] had their garbage service there. They’d been repairing trucks and equipment in the metal building for about 15 to 18 years, and there was horse boarding in the main barn. And they did some equestrian events; they did some cow roping. And I said, “You mean I can't use this for our own use?” And they said, “No, you don't fit into the [inaudible 55:57]. And, matter of fact, you have a roofing company there, they have to move.” And I couldn't figure out what was going on. So since that period of time, I've kept track of all the different businesses we've sent out and talked. We did have horse boarding as I said when we came there. And, you know, we live on the other side of town, and we own two horse boarding stables in Clackamas, and we also own McKay Creek Farms. And so, Heidi wanted to expand it as her business was going good, so we went ahead and expanded the stables and she moved over there and then used this. While she—after she was there for a period of time, she was told she needed a—she was—she had to get a nonconforming permit because she shouldn’t have cows there. There was nothing about having horses, but couldn't have cows. She went in, processed her permit, and they just said, “Remember, always to make sure there's horse activity.” They didn’t say, “Make sure you have a equestrian license, a commercial license.” It's just make sure the use of horses was maintained. A lot of the things that we've done over the period of time, we haven’t charged for. We haven't charged for a lot of the kids’ groups that come out there and do anything while we've had ownership, and, you know, we're looking to try to promote family things. We had talked to, actually, Mr. Reynolds about bringing out a youth organization called the Portland Quarter Midgets that race in Alpenrose Dairy. We were told that wouldn't be allowed. We had a tow truck company that wanted to store buildings inside of a metal warehouse. We were told we could do that, but the minute they parked the tow trucks and some cars on the outside, we were asked to have them moved, which we did. But we remembered what the comments was the last time they had to come before City Council, and that was, “Make sure you have horse activity there at least once a year. You cannot go without a year.” And in 2009, there was a bad storm—or maybe it was December, and we had two of our arenas collapse in Clackamas. And so, that's why some of our people from Clackamas come out here to use that arena. It's because we had no arena. It had completely collapsed. And, I guess it's fortunate, but Heidi ended up using it in the meantime, so we had overlapping. But I told both of them, “Please use it so to make sure we don't lose our usage.” There's no requirement that I have to charge somebody to use it. If we let somebody use it, if we want to give it to a charity or to an organization, that should be our privilege. You know, I guess I have a problem that the neighbors that called us, we had a lot of letters and they were very complimentary of how Heidi had taken care of the property much better than when the former owners R:\Board and Commissions\Planning Commission\CPC June 26 2012 Verbatim Transcript.doc
Page 1 and 2: CITY OF CORNELIUS CORNELIUS CITY CO
Page 3 and 4: AGENDA REPORT September 17, 2012 To
Page 5 and 6: AGENDA REPORT September 17, 2012 To
Page 7 and 8: City of Cornelius Agenda Report To:
Page 9 and 10: C. PUBLIC HEARING 1. APPEAL: Appeal
Page 11 and 12: the city, it was brought in by Royl
Page 13 and 14: Zone and is prohibited by City Code
Page 15 and 16: Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: Oh, okay. M
Page 17 and 18: chance to practice because we can't
Page 19 and 20: Mr. Stone: Not unlike the three peo
Page 21: so—but I think during that time t
Page 25 and 26: espect, if you go back and look at
Page 27 and 28: The City is referring to a section
Page 29 and 30: Mr. Semm: Approximately 15 years ag
Page 31 and 32: flies, the loud music. When it goes
Page 33 and 34: usiness license for a horse stable
Page 35 and 36: Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: I think we'
Page 37 and 38: Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: So the next
Page 39 and 40: [Off microphone comments] Vice Chai
Page 41 and 42: Ms. Heuer: This whole thing here, y
Page 43 and 44: CITY OF CORNELIUS PLANNING COMMISSI
Page 45 and 46: issued a Metro business license to
Page 47 and 48: there was no equestrian use of the
Page 49 and 50: Vice Chair Sheckla-Cox: I’m just
Page 51 and 52: you know, did—was the use continu
Page 53 and 54: Mr. Orozco: Correct. Commissioner B
Page 55 and 56: don’t know what the word would be
Page 57 and 58: as my involvement. And mostly it wa
Page 59 and 60: Mr. Reynolds: Well, the best I can
Page 61 and 62: Commissioner Starrett [1:09:02]: I
Page 63 and 64: Commissioner Ferrie Jr. [1:15:16]:
Page 65: D. NEW BUSINESS - None Vice Preside

City Council Packet - Cornelius

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